Should we think of it as documenting the actual (hurricanes that have actually happened - why does that sentence make me feel like a Cockney flower girl?) or is it also pregnant with the potential?

As the latter seems uncomfortably close to divination, might I suggest that anyone listing the name of a future hurricane provide an annotation giving the method by which they arrived at the forecast - e.g., extispicy, kephalonomancy, ololygmancy, or the ever-popular apantomancy? This seems particularly desirable for names lower in the alphabet. For instance, it seems like a given that there will be a hurricane Cosme in the Eastern North Pacific in 2013, but putting Velma on the list without further justification seems unwarranted.

Then there was the hypertyphonic year of Katrina, when they exhausted the list and had to resort to calling the later ones alpha, beta, etc? (And, in case you were wondering, if necessary these 'names' are eligible for retirement as well).